IPhone Wikipedia Project


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Goal: Running Wikipedia in an offline database locally on the iPhone

  • Unicode characters must be able to index, search and render correctly for the zh wiki to run successfully on iphone

Contents

Current Candidates

Some useful links

Marks my involvement in improving the projects...

iPhonePedia

img0032ia6.jpg

Pros

  • Pictures and formattings preserved
  • Full text search (good for English entries)

Cons

  • Uses Apache, not lighttpd
  • Seems to be having problems with unicode search
  • Full text search (bad for CJK entries)
  • Uses Safari - can interfere with regular browsing activity

Installation

  • Converted data file from instructions given on http://trac2.assembla.com/iPhonePedia/wiki/InstallationInstructions (conversion support Windows but requires cygwin dlls and perl)
  • Installed Perl on iPhone
  • Installed application on iPhone - manually, as the installer feed does not work.
  • Successfully gotten search.php to show up, search does not work: problem with lighttpd?

Wikipedia

img0029da6.jpg

Pros

  • Native app, no safari needed
  • Search completion
  • Better chance of supporting unicode / CJK characters (although it does not, at the moment)
  • Title search (good for CJK entries)
  • Easy to install, easy to use

Cons

  • Data file a hassle to set up when using non MacOS / BSD based machines
  • Currently does not support unicode characters, all text garbled
  • Does not include wikitext parser so formats are stripped

Installation

Wiki-Server

img0031ky9.jpg

  • Not open-source at the moment

Pros

  • Moderately easy to set up - but not the easiest
  • Limited formatting available
  • Unicode wiki usable already!!
  • Uses a separate web server and another port, does not interfere with existing web servers
  • Indexes generates the fastest

Cons

  • No searching? Only going to a page directly
  • Some formatting tags parsed incorrectly

Comparison Table

Feature iPhonePedia Wikipedia WikiSrv
Client-Server based Yes No Yes
Safari browsing Yes No Yes
Native GUI browsing No Yes No
Image Support Yes No Yes
Formatting Parsing Advanced Basic Advanced
Template Parsing Limited No Most
Unicode Support Unknown Content only Yes
Search Fulltext and title Title only No
Data file type Many small files One big file Many small files